"Twenty-three," I reply instantly. "I’m turning twenty-four in about six months."
"Good," she states. "I assume you're not a virgin?"
I let out an indignant huff. "Not that that's any of your business, but no, I am not."
"Pity," she says, using the exact same word that guy used before. "You could make a fortune here, especially if you were untouched."
I chuckle. "I've heard that before..."
Her eyes flare at my words.
"I heard those exact words from a guy earlier, outside of your office," I explain. "One of your clients, I assume. I think his name was... Mr. King?"
She raises her eyebrows, and then shifts to place her elbows on the desk between us as she leans forward. "He talked to you?"
I shrug. "Briefly. He thought I was one of your girls. Which - to be quite frank - I thought was a little insulting."
"I see," she remarks. "Did he appear disappointed when you told him that you're not?"
Her question baffles me. Why does it matter? "Maybe, a little."
"Interesting."
She takes another sip from her bourbon, and I reach for my water, emptying half of it in one gulp. This interview has taken a weird turn, an interesting turn, I've got to admit.
"Who is he?" I inquire.
Miss Barry smiles at me. "You know I can't tell you any personal details about our clients."
"So he is a client?"
She nods, biting her tongue for revealing too much to me already.
"Let's assume I was interested in going through your application process," I say, holding up my hands in mock defense, as if to debate her hopes. "For research purposes, that is."
Miss Barry casts me a condescending smile. "Of course."
"What would that look like?"
She cocks her head to the side, the smile on her face softening. "If you have some time, we could go through some of it right now."
Our eyes meet again, locking onto each other longer than the time before, almost resembling a silent staring contest. She's challenging me, I can tell. Miss Barry sees me as someone who's all talk, displaying a toughness that is nothing more than a facade. She doesn't think I'd go through with this. She expects me to chicken out.
She's not the first one to make that mistake.
I smile at her, mirroring the way she looked at me before. "Okay, let's do it."
Chapter Five
Jared
This girl has absolutely no business being stuck in my head for this long. Her presence is so strong that it's hard for me to focus on anything else. There are things that need doing, people who I need to talk to, positions to be filled, some to free me of some of my responsibilities, others to help me get on to the next step. I can't afford to be this preoccupied with something as silly as a girl.
And the worst thing is, I don't even understand why it’s happening.
She was pretty, I won’t deny it. But I can have pretty any time, and I've had pretty plenty of times. Yet her long, ash blond hair and those gray-blue eyes did something to me, especially in combination with the way she carried herself. She's not very tall, but she makes up for it with a strong stance, very straight posture, and a tension about her whole demeanor that I haven't seen on any other girl before.
Challenging. Demanding.
And the way she looked at me. Goddammit. It's as if she didn't know who I was, as if she had no idea what the appropriate reaction should be when faced with a man like me.
Doesn't she know? Doesn't she see me? The muscles, the money, the unspoken power. It's what brings them all down to their knees within minutes, but she didn't even blink when she looked at me.
She was insulted when I mistook her for one of the agency’s girls, which is understandable. But it doesn't make things any easier for me. On the contrary, it only makes me want her even more.
I'm sitting at the desk in my home office, twirling a single malt on the rocks, when my attention is drawn back to the computer when a new e-mail pops up in my private inbox.
The sender surprises me. It's from the agency, Violent Delights. Sent by Belinda Barry.
I take another sip of my drink before I open the e-mail, curious to see what they could have for me. I was there just yesterday, and usually I don't hear from them for at least a week in between visits.
I lean in closer to the screen, curious to read the e-mail. There's a file attached, which means they have a new girl for me to look at. The message itself is pretty short, though.
I thought you might want to have a look at this one.
That's all it says. Belinda has never been a woman of many words, but this is exceptionally brief, even for her. I hesitate before clicking to open the attached file, but curiosity gets the better of me.
My heart stops when I see the picture on the screen.
It's her.
It's the girl I met at the agency, the girl who claimed to be a journalist. I can still see her face before me, the grimace she cast me, the indignant look, as if I was completely out of my mind for thinking she worked for the agency.
Yet here she is. Smiling at me, the expression very different from the one she gave me when I met her in person. At first view, her file looks like any other file. There is a modest portrait on the front page and a list of her measurements and other basic stats right next to it.
But that's where the similarities end. For starters, there are only two pictures in her file, the portrait picture and a full body picture, and she's wearing the same outfit in both. Usually the girls are presented in a variety of poses wearing several different outfits, and some of them are even nude, leaving little to the imagination. Her pictures don't even look as if she's done anything special to make herself more attractive before having them taken. In fact, they both appear to have been taken the day I met her, now that I think about it. She's wearing the same blouse and black pants, but her hair is not tied back in a ponytail as it was when I saw her. Thick strands of straight, ash blond hair are cascading over her shoulders, almost reaching down to her hips, enwrapping her like a cape. Her smile is careful and coy, displaying uncertainty and vulnerability.
What the hell is this? Is Belinda playing a trick on me or something? Why would she send this to me?
And who is this girl, Ann? She didn't even bother to come up with an alias. The file is titled ANN, the same name she used when she introduced herself to me.
Did she lie to me? Did she in fact show up at the agency to try to get hired? If so, this was definitely a weird way for Belinda to go about it, as the selection process takes weeks and never are the girls marketed with a couple of half-assed photos and a quick interview.
Ann's file is pretty empty, but there's one part that catches my attention. When first being introduced to clients, new girls are asked a bunch of personal questions, including their sexual likes and dislikes, amount of sexual experience, their fantasies and things they're willing to try out. The answers to these questions appear in the main section of their profiles. There's one particular question that I like to check out first, though, before deciding whether or not a girl might be a good match for me. The girls are always asked why they want to work for the agency, and their answer often tells me more about them than anything else appearing in their files. Most girls come up with some kind of whitewashed version of the truth, usually something along the lines of wanting to "free" their "inner slut" or learning more about themselves by "exploring" their "fantasies and desires". My eyes have a tendency to roll back into my head every time I read this silly nonsense.